When We're Missing You
by paigetheclarinetist
Summary: Full-length sequel to 100 Drabbles Starring P, A, & A. Piper, Audrey, and Amberly are the seniors now; Jack, James, and Michael are gone to college, leaving the school a little lonely, but definitely not boring. T for possibility of language.
1. A Band Geek Commandment

**Well, here it is. The full-length sequel to my 100 Drabbles piece. I kind of popped those drabbles out really fast, so here I am with this... This'll take a little longer, I'm now only updating all of my stories on Sundays to give me time to overview my chapters and all that stustufastufs. **

**The main characters are Piper (shocker!), Audrey, Amberly, Sticks, and Isabelle. The chapter titles will come from something that one of them said during the chapter, mostly Piper and Audrey seeing as they are the wittiest most of the time. ****You'll really be able to learn a lot about the characters, more than you knew in the drabbles. It'll be easier for them to grow on things and really reflect, seeing as you can't do much reflecting with 100 words.**

**Okay, I hope you like these. :)**

**-P**

* * *

"Audrey, are we really seniors?" Piper Daniels asked her best friend, gripping the barrel of her clarinet tight in her hand and resting the bell on her knee.

Audrey Rogers sighed deeply and kicked the back of her French horn case, "Yup." She was less than excited about it; her boyfriend Michael was a freshmen in college, leaving her alone with the less-than boyfriend-material underclassmen. "Kind of scary, isn't it?"

"Kind of?" Amberly Samson shook back her locks of loose blonde hair from the rims of her black glasses. "God, I'm scared out of my mind."

Their last year in high school had arrived; James Kingsley, Michael Peterson, and Jack Kim had left for their freshmen year of college, making the band room seem quiet and unfriendly to everyone who'd been apart of band long enough to know the three, or at least to the four girls in the circle. Piper could remember her freshmen year, when there were dozens of older teenagers running around making an awful lot of noise; she'd give anything to be back there in that time, as the girl who was section leader even though she was a freshmen. Now, being section leader as a senior, it wasn't such a great accomplishment. Not that she wasn't proud nonetheless, but still. And the upperclassmen weren't as family-oriented with the underclassmen; she, for one, avoided all the sophomores completely, but still talked to the freshmen.

"I am too," Isabelle Kim said softly. She was used to sitting with the three girls in band class- they were her best friends- but she was also used to her brother Jack and his two best friends with them as well. Now as a senior with her brother and his friends in college, everything was different. She was lonely, to say the least. The girls were her best friends, but she'd grown up with James and Michael around. Now that they weren't, it was as if she'd lost _three_ brothers instead of just Jack.

"It's so… _quiet_," Piper sighed deeply. "God, I miss James."

"Everyone misses James, Pipe."

"Even Mr. Fisher misses James," Amberly agreed with Audrey and nodded her head towards their short redheaded band director who was currently showing an alternate saxophone fingering to a clueless freshmen. Piper laughed; she remembered freshmen year, teaching the sophomore and junior players how to play a middle B and C using the side keys on the upper piece. Those naïve underclassmen were so much different from herself.

Mr. Fisher looked up and saw the four girls talking, "Hey, Pipper? Come over here, will you? Tune the saxophone?"

Piper rolled her big green eyes towards the high ceiling, passed her clarinet to Isabelle, and walked over to Mr. Fisher. Hands on hips, the almost 6-foot-tall but amazingly thin girl glared down at her teacher, "Mr. Fisher…"

"_Piper_, right. Four years, probably should have figured that out by now." She'd yet to learn why Mr. Fisher continued to mispronounce her name whenever he saw her- Michael had never been very fond of her, and that was his present for her when she became a sophomore, telling Mr. Fisher that her name was _Pipper_ and not _Piper_. She'd hopefully figure that out eventually, so she could slap the boy upside his head and make him teach Mr. Fisher that her name really was Piper.

"Mhm, now _what else_?" she tapped her foot against the linoleum, the corners of her lips curling up in a smile.

"You play _clarinet_, not saxophone. Right, that too."

"Good boy," she smirked at him. "Should I get Sticks?" She gestured at the senior boy with a saxophone talking to Isabelle- her first _faithful_ boyfriend- who had earned his nickname from getting whacked in the head with an overenthusiastic drummer's broken drumstick at marching band practice in his sophomore year.

"Please do."

While Piper liked to stay around and torture her director, especially when he said her name wrong or tried to get her to tune some completely different instrument from her own. But then he seemed rather stressed, and she knew better than to frustrate him while he tried to decipher what exactly was flying out of her mouth at that amazingly fast pace. They had practice after school; he'd make it run even longer.

Piper smiled at her teacher and disappeared from in front of him, flouncing over to Sticks and Isabelle. Sticks had his large hand over Isabelle's tiny one, and he was talking quietly to her. She was blushing; it was such a sweet, intimate moment Piper almost felt guilty for interrupting them. _Almost_ was the key word.

"Sticky!" she cried loudly.

Sticks, whose real name was Connor, looked away from the face of his girlfriend and narrowed his eyes at Piper. "He wants me to tune that damned saxophone, doesn't he?" Sticks knew as well as Piper that the saxophonist that needed tuning could be tuned twenty times a day and still suck. Mr. Fisher just tried to raise his self-esteem by blaming it on the saxophone, as he couldn't bear to have the one freshmen saxophone that had actually moved up from the middle school quit.

"Sorry, bud. But yes, he does. I'll take care of the _petite amie_, don't worry about it."

Sticks furrowed his brow and was about to question her on the meaning of the word, but instead decided to shake it off and go help Mr. Fisher. He'd gotten into many a fight with her before, all throughout their past high school years. And she rarely gave up, stubborn as a mule. Prettier than a mule, he'd have to say, but stubborn as one, or possibly worse. He waved goodbye to Isabelle and was gone, leaving Isabelle with Piper.

"Aw, he's _too_ cute," Piper giggle-cooed to Isabelle, who smiled appreciatively. She giggled one more time before flouncing off towards Audrey.

A junior girl caught up behind her- Faith. Typical. She was a gigantic pain in the butt, and Piper hated her immensely, even though she was one of the best clarinets in Piper's section. "Piper, Piper, omigod. Please come listen to my district solo?"

"Not right now, Faith." She continued on her way to Audrey, ignoring Faith's pleading. Audrey was standing outside on the concrete pad in the bus parking lot with Amberly, and their heads were bent together, whispering.

Piper sped up a little and continued to her friends until- _smack_. Right, sliding glass doors. She always forgot about the sliding glass doors that lead outside. Darn it. She fell back and landed on Faith, to hear her two best friends laughing hysterically.

"Faith, this is why you don't _ever_ listen to anything Piper tells you," Audrey rolled her eyes condescendingly. "First band geek commandment! Thou shalt not followeth those who runneth into walls!"

"Eth," Amberly added, then giggled.

"Shut up and get me off the ground, please," Piper snapped irritably towards her friend. "You know, sitting on the ground I'm right at eye level with you, Audrey."

Audrey cocked her head to the right, confused. Her friend's head was on the same level as her butt- Audrey was unbelievably short and Piper was amazingly tall. Amberly burst out laughing again, "She means that you have your head stuck up your ass, Audrey."

Audrey took a moment to register the thought, before gasping and glaring at Piper. Piper threw back her head and laughed, "God, you take forever." She climbed up to her feet, hovering a good six inches over Audrey then, and another four over Amberly. God, they were so short.

Audrey, obviously angry at her friend, took a few moments to ponder a snap to shoot back at Piper. Her expression seemed deadly, but Piper knew it was merely a bluff so Piper didn't underestimate her friend even though she probably wouldn't have a comment to attack her with. Audrey burst out laughing after a few seconds; Piper grinned, knowing she was right and that her friend would never have a comeback.

Amberly took a deep breath, "You know what?" They both looked at her. "That made me forget about Jack for five whole minutes." She tapped her wrist, as though there actually was a watch there and not a collection of plastic beads and Dora the Explorer charms that she stole from her little sister.

"Yeah, I forgot about James, too," Piper said quietly. She sat down on the edge of a tuba case laying on its side and sighed. "Damn you, Amberly."


	2. We're So Cool

Mr. Fisher stood at the front of the band room on his director's platform, waving his arms in the air like a madman at the entire band. Piper, per the usual, was standing to the right of Mr. Fisher, a smirk on her face and her right eyebrow cocked up.

"Do you think this is all a joke?" he yelled. "We've got a game at the end of the week! Have you people all forgotten?"

Piper rolled her eyes and whispered towards her section, "God forbid we actually were left alone long enough to forget." Her section laughed, but the others didn't dare for the fear of their leaders attacking them; Isabelle's flute section was the most fearful, for even though the girl _looked_ sweet and innocent, she definitely wasn't.

Mr. Fisher looked at the clarinets, "Apparently, this is where it has all started. Where's Pipper?"

Silence. Followed by silence. Followed by Piper air-slapping the back of Mr. Fisher's head for mispronouncing her name yet again. Followed by even more girlish clarinet giggles- it was the only all-girl section, there was even a male flute player.

Mr. Fisher took a few minutes of the laughter before he spun around and saw Piper, "PIPPER!"

"How would you like it if I called you something that wasn't even your actual name all the time?" she replied sweetly, trying to get her teacher to turn back around so she could continue her mocking.

"Piper," he shook his head and ran his hand through his very short hair. "God, what am I going to do with you?"

"That's the ever-asked question." Piper knew that while Mr. Fisher acted as if he despised her, he probably wouldn't know what to do without her. She was his leading senior, and she'd been leading her section and all the others since her sophomore year, even though the drum major and the other section leaders yelled at her. Mr. Fisher would do anything to keep his precious Piper out of trouble, which was something he often had to do; she was smart and clever, but she often used her great wit and sarcasm against her teachers when they irritated her, landing her in the principal's office almost once a week.

Mr. Fisher turned back to the class, checked his watch, and threw his arms up dejectedly, "Oh, forget it. Class dismissed."

Piper grinned, and ran over to Audrey. She stood waiting for her friend to pack up so they could leave for home. "Piper, I sometimes wonder if Mr. Fisher is ever going to actually yell at you," Audrey mused.

"He yells at me all the time," Piper said. Audrey tilted her head to the side, and Piper cracked a smile. "I just never get in trouble."

"Oh, honestly."

-----

"You are _so_ not cooler than we are," Amberly said stubbornly into Piper's cell phone to Jack and the other boys. His sister, seated behind Amberly on Piper's bed, let out a yell of agreement.

"Are too," her egotistical boyfriend replied, just as inflexible as she. "We're so much cooler. So cool that we're best friends with polar bears."

"We're so cool that we march with penguins," Piper said wittily- making a double joke on marching band and the movie _March of the Penguins_- earning a chuckle from her boyfriend on the other line. She also heard Jack hitting him for it.

"We're so cool that we're the penguins' section leaders," Michael offered.

"Michael!" Audrey cried out. "Don't get yourself caught into this."

"Oh, Audrey, now you have to come up with one!"

"I don't _think_ so."

"Come on, Audrey! It's fun!" Piper pushed her friend slightly.

Audrey shook her head and her hair hit Isabelle in the face. "Ew, Audrey. Your hair smells like raspberries, but it sure as hell doesn't taste like one."

"Isabelle, you're trying to _distract_ her. Stop it, she has to come up with one."

"Did you guys forget we were here or something?" Jack asked.

"Kind of," Amberly replied, "But hush, we're having a girl-to-girl argument."

"You're on the freaking phone with us, how are you having an argument that isn't with _us_?" James yelled.

"James, you could have said that in a quiet voice and we'd still have heard you."

"Shut up, Piper."

"Omigod, you guys are trying to distract me from getting Audrey to come up with a 'we're so cool-' remark!" Piper realized suddenly, jumping up from the bed. "Audrey, now, come on!"

"Piper."

"It's _your_ turn, Audrey. You have to make one up. I've done it, Jack and Michael have done it."

"Then make Isabelle or Amberly do it, or _your_ boyfriend!"

"Audrey."

Audrey sighed deeply, exasperated with Piper as usual. She was in no mood to argue with her. "We're so cool, _ice cubes_ are _jealous_." Piper smiled, pleased, and Amberly and Isabelle laughed. Michael was laughing on the other end, but Jack was quick to hush him. As usual, always the competitor.


	3. Nature Is Beautiful

"Honest to God, people! You realize that if we play like crap _now_, we'll play like crap later and sound like even worse crap because we're on a freaking football field with a hundred people watching us!" Piper yelled, throwing her arms up into the air. The entire band was out on the marching band field after school before the first home game. Piper had never seen her clarinetists work so crappy, all eight of them were playing horribly. "This is a very important game! This is the _first_ home game! Not the fifth, not the last, the _first_!"

"We'll get better throughout the season, Piper!" complained Emily. "We just have to keep trying."

"Why not start the season amazing and then turn out spectacular by the time the whole thing's freaking over?" Piper snapped. "Did you think of that, Emily, instead of trying to be a psychologist all the time and raise these sucky players' self esteem?"

"Piper is right, everybody. You need to listen to her and go out there and play your asses off!" Faith stood up beside Piper and nodded her head furiously.

"So I see it's just Faith and I that actually _care_ about our section? Apparently so. Emily's too busy playing the role of guidance counselor," she pointed at the irritated girl. "And Adrianne and Tiffany are too busy checking their fingernails to see if they chipped them on a freaking key, and-"

"Piper, stop being such a bitch," muttered the lowest person in Piper's section, Adrianne. Piper rounded on her with a glare in her eye that would make any person tremble, 6 inches tall or 6 feet.

Making Piper angry had never been the smartest of pathways. There was the irritated why-can't-you-play-your-damn-music-yet angry, and then there was the anger that occurred when someone talked back to her. They both happened about the same amount, which was one of the reasons why Mr. Fisher was always nearby Piper's section when they were out on the field. He knew the dangers.

He'd seen Piper tear someone's clarinet out of their hands, getting one of the track and field geeks, and having her player chase the runner until she got to him to earn her instrument back. The girl had broken down in tears and Piper had the clarinet for a good hour. Then she'd once made her entire section run three miles because one of them tripped over their shoe and almost rammed a clarinet through a flutist's shako, resulting in the _whole section_ breaking down into tears.

Then she'd ordered someone to organize all the uniforms and concert clothes because they got in an argument with her over whether the note was a C-sharp or a D-flat, which didn't matter because they were the same thing- Piper was trying to tell the young clarinetist that they _were_ exactly the same, but the clarinet called her a 'complete blundering idiot because _everyone_ knows that C-sharps are _not_ the same as D-flats!'

Oh, and the multiple times Piper would yank a trumpet's mouthpiece out if they got too rowdy near her or her section- they'd once caused a clarinet to drop her instrument and break it- and dangle it above their head, before threatening to throw it under the bleachers unless they promised to never do it again.

And then there was the numerous threats to not let any various instrument- her section, Audrey's, Amberly's, and Isabelle's were the only four she had _complete_ control over, but it didn't stop her from threatening all of them- march in the next game or competition, which brought forth a lot of fear in their eyes.

And then there were her glares. Her glares were so scary looking, they made people shake, quiver, fall over in a dead faint. There was no telling what you'd done to deserve one of her glares, they were quite common. Her eyes narrowed, her teeth were clenched, her fists were balled up at her sides; she was quite beautiful, even when she was angry, but she was more of an evil princess beautiful then.

Oh, and all the times she'd attacked Sticks, ever since freshmen year. Before freshmen year, she'd completely tortured him as well. The story went that he had his nickname from an excited drummer breaking a stick and it flying through the air to hit him in the back of the head, but it was Piper who had positioned the drummer- who she knew had a habit of breaking his sticks a little _too_ often- where they'd be sure to hit Sticks. She wasn't even sure of why Sticks deserved such torture half the time; she just preyed on him because Isabelle would keep him from completely murdering her.

And what she did to even her best friends when they made her mad. Piper wasn't afraid to do whatever she could to get her friends to focus on band, so during practice, games, and competitions Piper wasn't much of a friend. She was more of a drill sergeant. Audrey's mouthpiece spent more time in Piper's Dooney & Bourke handbag than in Audrey's instrument during the summer before junior year, when she was broken up with Michael; Piper claimed that she couldn't take Audrey's bitchy attitude and that whenever she decided to get back with her boyfriend, she could have her mouthpiece back. Audrey had quite a fun band camp, not being allowed to play her instrument.

Piper was somewhat of a bully at times, but she had reasoning. Everyone loved Piper, it was only during marching band season that they wanted to hate her. She did things to help her band, and if it happened to be a little mean, so be it. She loved band, it was her passion; it was her everything, and if it meant scaring everybody into working their asses of, so be _that_, too.

And, as usual, Adrianne called her a bitch. It happened almost every day, every practice. Piper was quite used to it by now and it didn't really even make her mad, it was just fun to scare the crap out of Adrianne.

She hovered over Adrianne, and the brave sophomore looked at her straight in the eye. She was prepared for push ups, or running laps, or polishing the drum major's shoes- whatever Piper gave her, she always did. But instead of ordering something out, Piper smirked. The others in the band gasped slightly; that was different. "Did you just call me a bitch?" she asked. Faith looked at Piper strangely; she didn't seriously need confirmation, did she?

"Yeah," Adrianne replied meekly.

Piper's smirk grew wider, and the close-by Audrey knew exactly what was going on.

"Well, a bitch is a _dog_. Dogs _bark_, bark is on trees, trees are a part of nature, and nature is _beautiful_. So yeah, thanks for the compliment, Adrianne."


	4. Two Simple Golden Eighth Notes

"Have you ever wondered what it would be like if we weren't band geeks?" Amberly asked one day at a football game, observing the cheerleaders jumping and bouncing in their micro-mini skirts, then the football players running across the field after a stupid ball. Purposeless, all of it was.

"Um, depressing?" Piper offered. "We'd have _no_ life."

"What if we were-" Amberly gulped slightly, only being a little more dramatic than normal. "Cheerleaders?"

"Ack! Don't joke, Amberly!" Piper squealed, drawing attention to herself. As usual, all of the underclassmen boys stared at her, drinking in how pretty she looked even in the nerdy band uniform. "Cheerleaders?" her voice dropped low, and she was faking complete fright. "I'd rather be emo."

"Hey!"

"Oh, right. Sorry, Ams." She had, as usual, 'forgot' that Amberly classified herself as 'overly emotional' or 'emo', as they were in a high school that wore stereotypical labels like the latest goods from Abercrombie & Fitch.

"It's not a bad thing to be overly emotional, Pipe."

Piper's jaw dropped slightly, "It may not be bad for _you_, but you don't have to deal with constant mood swings coming from your best friend!"

"You know, it's a good thing we're band geeks, or we'd probably have murdered each other by now…"

"Oh, if only!" Audrey snapped. Piper glanced over, a little surprised that she hadn't noticed that Audrey was there.

"Shut up, Audrey. You don't know what you'd do without us here to be your best-best-best-_best_ friends!" Amberly slung an arm around Audrey and air-kissed her cheek.

Audrey yanked away, while Piper and Isabelle, who had just approached, laughed. "Jesus, Amberly! What the hell?"

"Aw, you know you _love_ me!"

"_Get off me_!"

Piper rested her tall, skinny self on Audrey's lap and smirked, "You act like you don't want us!"

"Gee, who would have thought?" Isabelle cracked. Piper kicked her.

"Piper, God! Your ass is bony as hell, get off of me!"

"Never!"

"PIPER!" Piper wiggled her butt a little, making Audrey squeal. "Piper, get off me, you lesbo!"

Piper jumped off of her friend's lap and glared, "Bitch!"

"Lesbian!"

"Lesbian-lover!"

"Lap-dancer!"

"Lap-dancer lover!"

"WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP?" Isabelle roared. Everyone in the bleachers turned to look at her, surprised that such a petite girl could scream so loudly. She giggled and sat down, "Thank God we're band geeks, or people would think we were crazy!"

* * *

Piper looked up at the ceiling of the band bus. Senior year was progressing, it was already November. She hadn't seen her own boyfriend since he'd left in August. Her friends hadn't seen theirs either, except lucky Isabelle. Why couldn't Piper have chosen a boyfriend in her own grade? It would have made so much more sense.

When she thought of James, she almost always would remember when they got together. That was the happiest day of her life. She'd been an eighth-grader, and he was a freshmen. They'd ridden the same bus, and had talked to each other daily. Piper had been completely infatuated with him from day one, and the two soon became best friends.

Piper sent Amberly to talk to him about her, and was heartbroken when she learned that he liked someone else. She went about being melancholy and depressed for a whole month before Audrey staged an intervention and crankily asked James at one of Piper's slumber parties, "Do you like her or _not_? I'm kind of tired of her acting like a wet cat." In those _exact_ words. Yup, that's exactly why she loved Audrey so much.

James had replied, "I'm not going to answer in front of a bunch of immature 8th-grade girls." Piper had freaked out on him, screamed at him for being such an asshole, and then sat there with Audrey and Amberly also shouting at him through the phone.

Then _two weeks_ later, the obviously-shy James asked Piper out. And they'd been dating since then. Despite the everlasting torture James had gone through in high school for dating a girl in the middle school, even though Jake Auburn was dating Mr. Fisher's daughter Amy while she was an eighth grader as well, James hadn't broken up with her. She hadn't broken up with him, either.

Awkward hugs, choppy conversation, and the most fumbling first kiss in the history of first kisses. That was her boyfriend, her klutzy, nerdy boyfriend.

Thinking about James reminded her of her first months in high school, in marching band. How she'd been ostracized from the rest of the clarinets, for _everyone_ knew that no woodwind should ever date a brass player. She was the only person that had ever broken that rule in the history of her band; Isabelle and Sticks, Michael and Audrey, Jack and Amberly, they were all perfect little couples in the same woodwind-woodwind or brass-brass pairing. Piper hadn't been allowed to sit with her section at games or on the band bus. James was his section's leader, so the ostracism wasn't as terrible, but he as well was tortured. And yet, James still didn't dump her over that. She'd have understood if he had, but he never did.

Now, after all of that, she'd never been happier. Piper's mother had told her that every woman would go through at least three guys in her lifetime before she found the one she was happy with; Amberly had done that, she'd found happiness on her fourth. But it was obvious that Piper was _not_ going to have to find two more guys to love. She didn't plan on leaving James for anything.

There was a ring hanging around her neck, tucked into her shirt where no one could see it. It was her promise ring, from James. Amberly had one from Jack, and Audrey had one from Michael, but Piper knew hers was special…

_Piper sat down on the edge of the concrete stoop in front of James' two-floor, five-bedroom home and looked into the puppy-like eyes of her boyfriend. He was set to go off to college the next morning, and that was the last night she'd ever spend with him until she hopefully joined him the following year._

_He reached out and took her hand, then pulled something from his pocket. He slid the golden band onto her finger and smiled, "I'm calling this a promise ring. But it isn't a promise ring…"_

_Piper gasped. "Are you serious?"_

"_Piper, will you marry me? Like, when we're out of college and everything, but will you?"_

_Piper flung her arms around his neck, "God, James! Of course I will!"_

"_I thought so…"_

The next morning before he left he had told her that she'd need to tell everyone that it was nothing but a promise ring, for they'd have a fit if they knew she was seventeen and already engaged. Piper had promised her mother she'd not marry until she was thirty, but who could wait thirteen years to marry their true love?

Piper reached into her shirt and pulled out the ring. It was a golden ring, slim and sleek. A simple diamond, very small, flanked by two golden eighth notes. It was the Piper Daniels engagement band. No other person in the world would be so moved by two golden eighth notes, but Piper was.

Two simple golden eighth notes, one for Piper, one for James. True love…


End file.
